WAR IS A FORCE THAT GIVES US MEANING​CHRIS HEDGES

“The historian Will Durant calculated that there have only been twenty-nine years in all of human history during which a war was not underway somewhere.”

“The enduring attraction of war is this: Even with its destruction and carnage it can give us what we long for in life. It can give us purpose, meaning, a reason for living. Only when we are in the midst of conflict does the shallowness and vapidness of much of our lives become apparent. Trivia dominates our conversations and increasingly our airwaves. And war is an enticing elixir. It gives us resolve, a cause. It allows us to be noble. And those who have the least meaning in their lives, the impoverished refugees in Gaza, the disenfranchised North African immigrants in France, even the legions of young who live in the splendid indolence and safety of the industrialized world, are all susceptible to war's appeal.”

“There are always people willing to commit unspeakable human atrocity in exchange for a little power and privilege.”

“In the beginning war looks and feels like love. But unlike love it gives nothing in return but an ever-deepening dependence, like all narcotics, on the road to self-destruction. It does not affirm but places upon us greater and greater demands. It destroys the outside world until it is hard to live outside war's grip. It takes a higher and higher dose to achieve any thrill. Finally, one ingests war only to remain numb.”

“The potency of myth is that it allows us to make sense of mayhem and violent death. It gives a justification to what is often nothing more than gross human cruelty and stupidity. It allows us to believe we have achieved our place in human society because of a long chain of heroic endeavors, rather than accept the sad reality that we stumble along a dimly lit corridor of disasters. It disguises our powerlessness.”

“The poison that is war does not free us from the ethics of responsibility. There are times when we must take this poison - just as a person with cancer accepts chemotherapy to live. We can not succumb to despair. Force is and I suspect always will be part of the human condition. There are times when the force wielded by one immoral faction must be countered by a faction that, while never moral, is perhaps less immoral.We in the industrialized world bear responsibility for the world’s genocides because we had the power to intervene and did not. We stood by and watched the slaughter in Chechnya, Sri Lanka, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Rwanda where a million people died. The blood for the victims of Srebrenica- a designated UN safe area in Bosnia- is on our hands. The generation before mine watched, with much the same passivity, the genocides of Germany, Poland, Hungary, Greece, and the Ukraine. These slaughters were, as in, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s book Chronical of a Death Foretold, often announced in advance”

“As long as we think abstractly, as long as we find in patriotism and the exuberance of war our fulfillment, we will never understand those who do battle against us, or how we are perceived by them,

“Just remember,' a Marine Corps lieutenant colonel told me as he strapped his pistol belt under his arm before we crossed into Kuwait, 'that none of these boys is fighting for home, for the flag, for all that crap the politicians feed the public. They are fighting for each other, just for each other.”

“The violence of war is random. It does not make sense. And many of those who struggle with loss also struggle with the knowledge that the loss was futile and unnecessary.”

“The moral certitude of the state in wartime is a kind of fundamentalism. And this dangerous messianic brand of religion, one where self-doubt is minimal, has come increasingly to color the modern world of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.”

“This too is a jihad. Yet we Americans find ourselves in the dangerous position of going to war not against a state but against a phantom. The jihad we have embarked upon is targeting an elusive and protean enemy. The battle we have begun is never-ending. But it may be too late to wind back the heady rhetoric. We have embarked on a campaign as quixotic as the one mounted to destroy us.”

Questions for Reflection

War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning seems, at first, like a misleading title. In what ways is it an appropriate title for the book? Why might Chris Hedges have chosen it?

In his introduction, Hedges makes the startling suggestion that "the rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug, one I ingested for many years" [p. 3]. How does Hedges support this claim? In what sense is war "a drug"? Who are its peddlers? How could something so horrific exert such power over so many people?

Hedges believes that "the only antidote to ward off self-destruction and the indiscriminate use of force is humility and, ultimately, compassion" [p. 17]. In what ways has America moved away from these virtues in the past decade? How can humility and compassion, individually and collectively, restrain nations from going to war? Why is it so difficult, and so important, to feel compassion for one's enemies? What memorable examples of compassion does the book provide?

What distinctions does Hedges make between sensory and mythic accounts of war? What reality does the myth of war conceal? Why are such myths necessary?

Hedges argues that "the nationalist virus" in the former Yugoslavia "was the logical outcome of the destruction of the country's educational system that began in the 1950s under Tito's rule" [p. 56]. What role did this nationalism play in the war that followed? How does nationalism distort and manipulate history? How might an independent and more objective educational system have prevented the war?

What is the relationship between sexual perversion and war, eroticism and death? Why, in Hedges' view, does war seem to unleash the basest forms of lust? How does war affect the way the body is perceived and valued?

Hedges writes that, after every war, "some struggle to tell us how the ego and vanity of commanders leads to the waste of lives and needless death, how they too became tainted, but the witnesses are soon ignored" [p. 115]. Why do citizens of post-war nations prefer not to listen to such accounts? Why is it important that they be heard? In what ways is Hedges' own book just such an act of witnessing?

What role does the press usually play in wartime? Why does Hedges believe that in the Gulf War, the press "wanted to be used" by the military? What role should the press play?

In his introduction, Hedges writes that the deadly attraction of war is that "even with its destruction and carnage it can give us what we long for in life. It can give us purpose, meaning, a reason for living" [p. 3]. At the end of the book, he writes that love "alone gives us meaning that endures" [p. 184–85]. How can we ensure that love, rather than war, remains the force that gives meaning to our lives?

What do Hedges's frequent references to Homer, Cicero, Shakespeare, and other classical writers add to the book? Why does he take such pains to place more recent wars in the historical context provided by such writers?

How does Hedges's own experience—the violence he has witnessed in El Salvador, Bosnia, Iraq, and elsewhere—lend weight to his arguments? What are the most compelling examples he offers to support his views? Do Hedges's firsthand accounts make him a more trustworthy critic of war than those who have never been in battle

In what ways is War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning relevant to the tensions between the United States and Iraq, and to other conflicts around the world today? Does the book offer new and more hopeful ways of thinking about war and peace?

Activity based on narratives from Chris Hedges Book:

“Perhaps some day I'll crawl back home, beaten, defeated. But not as long as I can make stories out of my heartbreak, beauty out of sorrow.”(Sylvia Plath)

Hedges book is filled with stories, narratives. As a reporter, he was always on the lookout for stories. Some stories he would sent on in the the New York Times, his paper for publication as a war reporter. The purpose of these war coorespondences was to give readers a true and immediate picture of what was going on in the war zone. But as Hedges pointed out, the reporters and paper also often had the agenda of supporting the war effort. In this book, the stories do not have this agenda. In this book the stories are included to dramatize or clarify a point that Hedges is making. They also impart a compelling emotional depth to the points that Hedges is making about war.

Choose a story that stands out in your memory of the reading

find and re-read it

take notes amounting to about 150 words addressing:

The point the story is inserted to dramatize or clarify

your view on how effective the story is

your reaction to the story

In the group discussion, use what you have written as a starting place

In the re-assembled seminar group, we will discuss narratives, their power and utility.